


you're getting to be a habit (with me)

by phantomlistener



Category: The Bletchley Circle
Genre: F/F, Friends With Benefits, Friends to Lovers, Post-Season 2, Smut, Teasing, roundabout confessions of love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-15
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-08 23:21:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27374872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phantomlistener/pseuds/phantomlistener
Summary: It's an unconventional arrangement, but then they have never been conventional women. And besides, it might all be about to change.
Relationships: Millie Harcourt/Jean McBrian
Comments: 20
Kudos: 43
Collections: Femslash Exchange 2020





	you're getting to be a habit (with me)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ktlsyrtis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ktlsyrtis/gifts).



“You’re late,” Jean says sternly to the rain-spattered woman standing on her doorstep.

“Five minutes,” Millie protests, pushes her hood back to reveal damp curls and bright lipstick. “The tube was _packed_.”

“And I suppose an umbrella was too much to hope for?”

Millie shrugs, looks down at the ground and back up at Jean through dark lashes, and it’s obvious she knows the effect that has, a coy smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Aren’t you going to ask me in?”

Jean rolls her eyes, but it’s for show and they both know it, as if she doesn’t expect Millie in her bed every Friday night after dinner like clockwork. “You might as well,” she says, steps aside and lets Millie shake the rain off of her mackintosh before hanging it neatly on the spare hook that’s empty for just that reason. “I’ll make us a spot of tea,” she adds, the same way she says it every week, and Millie follows her to the kitchen, trailing elegantly behind her as if she really is just here for a cup of tea and a digestive biscuit with an old friend. That's the same every week too, the polite disinterest that never manages to hide the sparkle in her eyes and the heat in her gaze.

Jean, as always, ignores it, fills the kettle and sets it on the hob, goes to reach for the tea canister. It should be ridiculous, this little performance, the two of them pretending they’re actually going to drink their tea and talk about the latest Agatha Christie (Jean is halfway through _A Pocketful of Rye_ , and she knows Millie has devoured it already, barely a week after publication).

It doesn’t _feel_ ridiculous.

Millie is watching her with the careful, speculative look of a desert traveller faced with an oasis and half-convinced it's a mirage. It's a fanciful thought, Jean thinks wryly, pouring hot water onto the tea leaves – but she has learned to be fanciful, every now and then, and Millie here in her kitchen, looking at her like that, does not bring her back down to earth.

She puts the lid on the teapot, covers it with its cosy, and puts it on the tray with two teacups to carry into the living room.

But Millie catches at her hand. “I don’t feel like tea,” she says in a low voice, and Jean raises an eyebrow, curious at this rebellion against the routine they’ve built up over the months: the quiet sipping of tea and drawing out of anticipation until impossible, impulsive Millie can bear it no longer. Jean always chides her for that, for the chronic lack of control that has her out of her chair and on her knees at Jean's feet with pleading eyes, tea left to grow cold on the coffee table.

She keeps the surprise from her voice. “You don’t?”

Millie shakes her head mutely, tugs at Jean’s hand until she’s standing directly in front of her, and all the pretence dissolves. She presses her forehead against Jean’s. It feels more intimate than a kiss, unscripted, unrehearsed, Millie with all her artifices stripped away, and Jean strokes her cheek with a gentle hand.

“I almost didn’t come,” Millie says into the silence. “Silly of me, I know. I just thought—”

“Thought what, dear?”

“I thought you might be tired. Of this – of _me_.”

“Silly girl.” Jean pulls back, puts all her warmth into her voice, all the affection she feels for the woman standing, curls still damp with rain, in the middle of her kitchen. “Have you ever known me to be less than honest with you?”

Millie snorts. “Economical with the truth, on occasion.”

“A fair point,” Jean says with not a little humour. “Have I given you reason to fret, then?” She reaches for her cheek again and Millie leans into the touch with a sigh. “Any reason at all?”

“No,” Millie allows. “I _said_ it was foolish, Jean.”

“Do you not enjoy our time together?”

This time Millie hesitates, and Jean steels her heart for the reply. She’s been let down more than once, over the years, done her fair share of letting women down gently too – but this is Millie. Millie who _knows_ her, has known her for years, has seen her scared and seen her angry and seen her bleeding out onto the hard stone floor of a traitor’s hallway.

“I enjoy it too much,” Millie says into the silence, and her voice sounds choked. “ _Too_ _much_ , Jean, and I—”

And Jean remembers too that it was Millie who held her on that cold floor, stayed with her in hospital when she lay helpless and frustrated in bed, making her laugh with off-colour jokes and flirting shamelessly despite the fact that she wasn’t put-together or practical or in control. It’s always been impossible to miss the way she looks at her, that mix of defiance and adoration just begging to be noticed. Anyone with half a mind for puzzles could have put it together, and Jean has a better mind than most.

How then, she wonders, staring up at Millie, did she so completely fail to notice?

She's pondered too long, can see Millie's expression closing off, hardening from soft vulnerability to the steely mask she puts on when she's trying to pretend she doesn't care. “Darling girl,” she murmurs, stroking along her cheekbone with gentle fingertips. “I enjoy it _too much_ as well, you know.”

They’ve spent half a lifetime talking in code, and this one is easily broken. Millie’s smile is radiant with relief. “ _Jean_ ,” she breathes, and the tone is so similar to the way she sounds in bed that Jean’s breath catches in her throat, heat pooling in her stomach. She steps forward and Millie steps back, calves pressed up against the drawers and cupboards underneath the kitchen counter, and they're so close that the warmth of her blooms through Jean's cardigan, through her blouse and undergarments to the skin beneath. Millie's arms wind around her waist.

“I assume,” she says archly, “that you won't be wanting that tea.” She slides out of Millie's embrace, halfway across the kitchen before Millie realises what's happening.

“I always have found your intelligence very, _very_ attractive,” says Millie with a laugh, and follows her upstairs.

***

Jean's neat bedroom is lit by five candles on the dressing table, set to burning in advance of Millie's arrival and putting paid to the fiction that they were ever going to do anything else, and they have it down to a fine art, the preamble that could be awkward but somehow never is. She has Millie out of her clothes with the practised ease of familiarity, skirt and jumper falling to the floor with rustled sighs, experienced fingers making short work of her brassiere and girdle. “ _Jean_ ,” she breathes, half reverent and half eager, standing there with her stockings falling down her thighs and a new, soft expression in her eyes. “I'd like,” she says, playing with the edges of Jean's cardigan, “to touch you, as well. May I?”

“There’ll be time for that,” agrees Jean with a smile, knowing Millie can feel the shiver that runs through her at the thought of elegant fingers undoing her blouse, slipping beneath her skirt and up beyond the boundary of her stockings. She never let that happen, before, wants it now with the force of something newly permitted. Thinks that Millie does too, if the way she's looking at her is anything to go by. “But first....”

She pushes Millie gently down on the bed and the candlelight turns her pale skin into soft oranges and reds, paints the curves of her breasts in grey shadow and highlights her cheekbones in flickering yellow. Jean kneels above her, looks down at the vulnerability of her nakedness next to the perfectly-ironed cuff of her own blouse, and smiles.

Millie lets out a sound, a sharp indrawn breath that wants to be something more, and Jean can’t bear to chide her for it, cups her cheek with a cool hand. “Tell me what you want.”

Millie nuzzles against her hand, kisses her palm, her lipstick dragging waxy and thick against her skin. “Just touch me,” she whispers hoarsely. “God, Jean, _please_ —”

It's fragile and intense, this new thing between them, and Jean's breath feels ragged in her chest. “I think,” she says slowly, “you’re going to have to be more specific.”

Millie’s eyes snap back to hers and the look in them is so deliciously aroused that Jean can’t help herself, leans down and kisses her, smudged lipstick and all, and Millie melts into it as if they’ve never done this before. They haven't, Jean supposes – not quite like this, not with the weight of confession between them. She pulls back before the kiss gets too deep, stares breathless down at Millie in the half-light. “Talk to me.”

“I—”

Jean raises an eyebrow, rearranges herself so her stockinged feet are curled beside her rather than kneeling: the wound in her thigh has been healed for months now, but it still aches under strain. She brushes her fingertips across the bottom of Millie’s ribcage, smiles at the way she sighs. “You can do better than that, dear,” she says with some amusement. “We both know how persuasive you can be when you want something.”

Millie’s eyes flutter closed. The pulse in her throat flickers with the candlelight. “Christ, Jean,” she says in a strangled voice. “You’re a _tease_.”

“No.” Her voice is matter of fact, the half-light hiding the laughter in her eyes. “I thoroughly intend to follow through, just as soon as you can manage to get the words out of that pretty mouth.”

“Oh— _god_ , Jean, I—” She opens her eyes, and the deep brown looks almost black as she meets Jean’s steady gaze. “I want—” she says, and Jean can hear the roughness in her voice, low and pleading. “Touch my breasts? _Please_?”

Jean rewards her with an encouraging smile and an obliging hand sweeping up over the softness of her ribs, cupping the swell of her right breast. Millie whines, arches into the contact. “ _More_.”

Her skin is warm, soft under her hands, and she brushes against her nipple with blunt nails, smiles at the way she sighs and quivers, red painted lips parted in a silent moan. “Your mouth,” Millie breathes, soft and pleading.

“Later,” promises Jean, “if you're good,” and the half-audible groan she gets in response is worth the sacrifice of Millie's skin against her lips, under her tongue. She gets too much of what she wants, does Millie, needs Jean to withold things on occasion, for her own good.

She waits until Millie is sighing and twisting helplessly beneath her, skin glowing with a combination of perspiration and heat, and drags her nails down through the dark hair at the apex of her thighs, smiling as Millie shudders, and she’s already wet, slick and hot against Jean’s cool fingertips. She says as much, relishes the small groan that escapes Millie’s lips at the observation. “Yes,” Millie says, “ _please,_ ” and the look she gives her is so full of longing that Jean can't help but indulge her.

Millie swallows a delighted gasp at the intrusion, mouth open, eyes never leaving Jean's as she moves inside her, and there's a small part of her that is still dispassionate enough to appreciate the eroticism of it, Millie's candlelit body trembling against the everyday pattern of Jean's bedspread. The rest of her shivers on a knife's edge of arousal, breath caught in her throat as Millie moans helplessly with every thrust of her fingers – soft low noises that for all their prettiness aren't usually permitted. Jean thinks she could let her, now that they are no longer playing, but Millie's hard-won obedience is too delicious to give up, even now. “Hush now,” she says, and withdraws her fingers until the moans are reduced to deep, shuddering breaths. “There’s a good girl.”

Millie jerks involuntarily against her and her eyes are wide with arousal, staring hungrily up at Jean as if she could devour her whole. “Don’t stop.”

Jean raises one eyebrow, waiting.

“Your fingers,” Millie clarifies, voice ragged. “Inside me, _please_.”

She obliges, slides three fingers slowly into the wet, open heat of her. Waits.

“ _Jean_.” There’s amusement in her voice, and desperation, and she shivers around Jean’s fingers. “Are you going to fuck me or not?”

“You only had to ask.” She keeps the triumph out of her voice – smugness is Millie's game, not hers – and sets an unrelenting pace, Millie’s hips meeting every thrust. The flush on her neck is sunset-soft in the candlelight and she bites her perfect lips in an attempt to stay quiet, ruining the last of her lipstick.

“Look at you,” Jean murmurs, and there's no reason to hide her affection any more, her pride. “Such a clever, beautiful girl.”

“ _Oh_ ,” gasps Millie, and she comes with a soft cry, clutching at the bed, at the hem of Jean's skirt, her back arched off the rumpled covers, and Jean could watch this forever, the sweat glowing on her skin, the glistening wetness between her thighs, the unashamed joy in her eyes as she pants and gasps her way back to reality.

She pulls her fingers out gently, wipes them on the bedspread beside her. “Okay?”

Millie is trembling still, a languid smile finding its way to her lips. “Bloody hell, Jean,” she says breathlessly. “More than okay.”

She's striking, _beautiful_ , the shifting light playing across her face and body, and Jean leans down to press a kiss to each of her cheeks in turn, then her mouth, and settles down beside her, strokes the length of her arm and watches the rise and fall of her chest subside into gentle breathing. “You're quite extraordinary,” she says, as if it's no more than an absent compliment.

“Flatterer.” Millie turns on to her side, rests her hand against Jean's waist where her blouse is still tucked into her skirt. Her voice is mischievous. “But I can prove it to you, if you'd like.”

“I would,” says Jean with certainty. “But perhaps some tea, first?”

Millie lets out a peal of delighted laughter, and kisses her.


End file.
